Young relicts and old relicts: a novel palaeoendemic vertebrate from the Australian Central Uplands
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Oliver, Paul M; McDonald, Peter J
Description
Climatic change, and in particular aridification, has played a dominant role in shaping Southern Hemisphere biotas since the mid-Neogene. In Australia, ancient and geologically stable ranges within the vast arid zone have functioned as refugia for populations of mesic taxa extirpated from surrounding areas, yet the extent to which relicts may be linked to major aridification events before or after the Pliocene has not been examined in detail. Here we use molecular phylogenetic and morphological...[Show more]
dc.contributor.author | Oliver, Paul M | |
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dc.contributor.author | McDonald, Peter J | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2018-08-28T04:49:09Z | |
dc.date.available | 2018-08-28T04:49:09Z | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1885/146664 | |
dc.description.abstract | Climatic change, and in particular aridification, has played a dominant role in shaping Southern Hemisphere biotas since the mid-Neogene. In Australia, ancient and geologically stable ranges within the vast arid zone have functioned as refugia for populations of mesic taxa extirpated from surrounding areas, yet the extent to which relicts may be linked to major aridification events before or after the Pliocene has not been examined in detail. Here we use molecular phylogenetic and morphological data to show that isolated populations of saxicoline geckos in the genus Oedura from the Australian Central Uplands, formerly confounded as a single taxon, actually comprise two divergent species with contrasting histories of isolation. The recently resurrected Oedura cincta has close relatives occurring elsewhere in the Australian arid biomes with estimated divergence dates concentrated in the early Pliocene. A new taxon (described herein) diverged from all extant Oedura much earlier, well before the end of the Miocene. A review of data for Central Uplands endemic vertebrates shows that for most (including Oedura cincta), gene flow with other parts of Australia probably occurred until at least the very late Miocene or Pliocene. There are, however, a small number of palaeoendemic taxa-often ecologically specialized forms-that show evidence of having persisted since earlier intensification of aridity in the late Miocene. | |
dc.description.sponsorship | This work was supported by a linkage grant from the Australian Research Council to P.M.O., Mark Adams, Michael Lee and Paul Doughty; an Australian Research Council Early Career Researcher Fellowship to P.M.O., the Australian National University and the Northern Territory Department of Land and Resource Management. | |
dc.format | 16 pages | |
dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | |
dc.publisher | Royal Society, The | |
dc.rights | © 2016 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. | |
dc.source | Royal Society open science | |
dc.subject | pliocene | |
dc.subject | aridification | |
dc.subject | climate change | |
dc.subject | evolutionary refugia | |
dc.subject | gecko | |
dc.subject | relict | |
dc.title | Young relicts and old relicts: a novel palaeoendemic vertebrate from the Australian Central Uplands | |
dc.type | Journal article | |
local.identifier.citationvolume | 3 | |
dcterms.dateAccepted | 2016-09-06 | |
dc.date.issued | 2016-10-05 | |
local.identifier.ariespublication | a383154xPUB4447 | |
local.publisher.url | http://rsob.royalsocietypublishing.org/ | |
local.type.status | Published Version | |
local.contributor.affiliation | Oliver, Paul M., Division of Ecology and Evolution, CoS Research School of Biology, The Australian National University | |
local.identifier.essn | 2054-5703 | |
local.bibliographicCitation.issue | 10 | |
local.bibliographicCitation.startpage | 160018 | |
local.identifier.doi | 10.1098/rsos.160018 | |
dcterms.accessRights | Open Access | |
Collections | ANU Research Publications |
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File | Description | Size | Format | Image |
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01 Oliver P M and McDonald P J Young relicts and 2016.pdf | 1.87 MB | Adobe PDF |
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